Heart Blackened + Introduction by Anton Bitel

Film info

Writer/director Jung Ji-woo translocates Fei Xing's courtroom drama Silent Witness (2013) to Seoul's elite. After celebrated singer Park Yu-na (Lee-Ha-nui) is killed, her fiancé, the older, super-rich CEO Yim Tae-san , hires lawyer and family friend Choi Hee-jung (Park Shin-hye) to clear his daughter Mi-ra (Lee Soo-kyung) of murder, even though there is evidence that seems to place the spoilt party girl - who had no love for her future stepmother - drunk and aggressive at the scene. "Money is everything," declares Chairman Yim, who believes that he can pay his way out of any problem - but Heart Blackened establishes a twisty dialectic between money and love, upending our expectations of its characters. Here the legal system is exposed to be an institution - not unlike cinema itself - of smoke and mirrors, where the right budget can manipulate anyone.